High-performance computing (HPC) may use supercomputers or computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Today, computer systems approaching teraflop performance are counted as HPC computers.
HPC is commonly associated with computing used for scientific research. A related term, high-performance technical computing (HPTC), generally refers to the engineering applications of cluster-based computing, such as the building, testing and use of virtual prototypes. Recently, HPC has come to also be applied to business use of cluster-based supercomputers, such as data warehouses, line-of-business applications, and transaction processing.
Cloud computing denotes use of remote computing resources accessed over a network that typically comprises the Internet. Cloud computing resources may be, for example, HPC or HPTC computing resources. An exemplary cloud computing resource is a HPC resource of a university where students and faculty may access the HPC resource over the Internet.
Even though HPC resources provide a high-level of computing power, demand for use of the HPC resources is often so great as to, at least sometimes, be greater that what can be provided, that is, greater than the capacity of the HPC facility to provide the computing resource to users.
Pricing of HPC resources are typically priced or allocated by unit of resource independent of time of use of the resource.